Skip to main content

Green Action Fund

  • Published on December 6, 2018
The Green Action Fund is the funding element of Green Action Week, an annual global campaign running during the first week of October to promote sustainable consumption. The fund is administered by Consumers International, with materials, research, policy support, and joint-campaign communications being provided. The theme for Green Action Week 2020 is 'Sharing Community’. Since 2018 this theme has encouraged participants to collaborate within their communities to increase access to sustainable goods and services.
The Green Action Fund (GAF) aims to promote sustainable consumption and reduce poverty in developing countries around the world. We do this by providing funding to Consumers International member organizations in developing countries to implement projects that will raise awareness of sustainable patterns of consumption and push for behavior change in consumers. In previous years, our theme was 'Safer, More Sustainable Food for All'. In 2018, a new theme was adopted - 'Sharing Community'. With this new theme we are aiming to promote cultures of sharing as a way of ensuring sustainable consumption. Projects from 2018 onwards will encourage people to share what they have with others in their communities, rather than taking an individualistic approach to consumption. Successful projects we have funded in the past have focused on a wide variety of topics: from sanitation and access to clean water, to organic food production and pollution. In 2018 we funded 24 projects in 20 developing countries. The activities took place throughout September and October, with a focus on the first week of October - as part of the Green Action Week campaign. Project activities included: awareness-raising workshops, training-of-trainer sessions, advocacy campaigns and street plays. In 2019 we funded 26 projects in 23 developing and transitional economies countries, including twelve in Africa, nine in Asia-Pacific, two in Latin America, and three in the Middle East.. The projects will be tackling a range of issues this year, from tacking food waste through the lens of gender equality in Niger, to initiatives in India that demonstrate how unused clothes donations can make a difference in helping vulnerable consumers to meet their basic needs. During Green Action Week, the annual global campaign running between 30 September and 6 October 2019, grantees will run activities linked into their wider projects, that mobilise consumers around the theme and promote actions that can be taken to reduce unsustainable consumption globally. The funded projects have reached hundreds of people around the world, and have been covered in local and national media publications. The projects have helped to raise awareness of the importance of sustainable consumption among consumers in developing countries, while also educating them about their rights as consumers and citizens. While each GAF project is relatively small in scope, a single project can still have a positive, tangible impact. For example, Association De Défense des Droits des Consommateurs (ADDC-Wadata), Niger, is training women in food preservation techniques and thus contributing to reducing the fluctuation of food prices during the year. This contributes to the overall goal of improving food security. Support the #GreenActionWeek 2020 campaign! Green Action Week is our opportunity to show how consumer advocacy groups, alongside other organisations and stakeholders around the world, are actively driving sustainable consumption. We will be using the week to celebrate the new ideas, insight and innovations that are delivering impact and progress towards SDG 12. Join us by using #GreenActionWeek on Twitter and Facebook to share how you are marking the week. We want to hear updates from the campaigns or actions you are taking to promote sustainable consumption in your country or region.

External source(s)

Project start date
01/01/2017
Project end date
31/12/2020

You might also be Interested in